Abhanga 2603
A windfall doesn't change your temperament; real peace comes only from facing the fear of death that drives your endless need for security.
The verse
जरी आलें राज्य मोळविक्या हातां । तरी तो मागुता व्यवसायी ॥१॥
तृष्णेचीं मंजुरें नेणती विसांवा । वाढें हांव हांवां काम कामीं ॥ध्रु.॥
वैभवाचीं सुखें नातळतां अंगा । चिंता करी भोगा विघ्न जाळी ॥२॥
तुका म्हणे वाहे मरणाचें भय । रक्षणउपाय करूनि असे ॥३॥
Literal translation
Even if kingdom comes to the bundle-seller's hand, he is yet again a tradesman. Thirst's laborers know no rest — desire grows on desire, work on work. Wealth's pleasures do not touch the body — worry burns the enjoyment, making obstacles. Tukā says: he bears the fear of death, and keeps making rescue-arrangements.
What it means
This is one of Tukārām's most diagnostically-precise verses on the psychology of unchanged habits. The opening is a thought-experiment: jarī ālēm rājya mōḷavikyā hātām — tarī tō māgutā vyavasāyī — even if the kingdom comes to a bundle-seller's hand, he returns to his trade. A mōḷa-vikā is a tiny petty-trader, the lowest rung of the commerce-pyramid, selling small bundles. Hand him a kingdom — he keeps his small-bundle business going. The temperament does not upgrade with the windfall.
The dhrūpada generalizes: trṣṇēchīm majurēm — nēṇatī visāmvā — vāḍhē hāmva hāmvām kāma kāmīm — the laborers of thirst do not know rest; longing grows on longing, work on work. Majurēm (day-laborers) is significant: the people enslaved by thirst are not idle — they work hard, but for thirst, not for themselves. Visāmvā (rest) is what they cannot reach. The second verse names the somatic consequence: vaibhavāñchīm sukhē nātaḷatām angā — chintā karī bhōgā vighna jāḷī — the pleasures of opulence do not touch the body; worry, making obstacle to enjoyment, burns it. Even when the wealth arrives, the body does not actually receive the pleasure — worry burns through it before it lands. The close locates the engine: vāhē maraṇāchēm bhaya — rakṣaṇa-upāya karūnī asē — he carries the fear of death and keeps making rescue-arrangements. The whole structure of unrest is held up by death-fear, and the unceasing safety-arrangements that follow from it.
For someone today
If you have noticed that windfalls don't change the temperament that craved them — the small bundle-seller in you keeps selling bundles even after the kingdom arrives — Tukārām hands you the diagnosis. The unrest is held up by trṣṇā-majurēm (thirst-laborers in the mind who do not know rest) and ultimately by maraṇa-bhaya (death-fear) and its endless rakṣaṇa-upāya (rescue-arrangements). The pleasure of wealth does not reach the body because worry burns through it on arrival. Until the death-fear engine is addressed, more wealth simply means more bundles. The work is to unhook the engine, not chase the windfalls.
Where this applies
- A wealthy person whose temperament is identical to their poor self
- Recognizing the trṣṇā-majurēm in one's own work-week
- Noticing that pleasures of arrival never reach the body in the worrying mind
- The death-fear that drives endless safety-arrangements behind apparent abundance